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faq page Frequently asked questions Misplaced Pages's Manual of Style contains some conventions that differ from those in some other, well-known style guides and from what is often taught in schools. Misplaced Pages's editors have discussed these conventions in great detail and have reached consensus that these conventions serve our purposes best. New contributors are advised to check the FAQ and the archives to see if their concern has already been discussed. Why does the Manual of Style recommend straight (keyboard-style) instead of curly (typographic) quotation marks and apostrophes (i.e., the characters " and ', instead of “, ”, ‘, and ’)‍? Users may only know how to type in straight quotes (such as " and ') when searching for text within a page or when editing. Not all Web browsers find curly quotes when users type straight quotes in search strings. Why does the Manual of Style recommend logical quotation? This system is preferred because Misplaced Pages, as an international and electronic encyclopedia, has specific needs better addressed by logical quotation than by the other styles, despite the tendency of externally published style guides to recommend the latter. These include the distinct typesetters' style (often called American, though not limited to the US), and the various British/Commonwealth styles, which are superficially similar to logical quotation but have some characteristics of typesetters' style. Logical quotation is more in keeping with the principle of minimal change to quotations, and is less prone to misquotation, ambiguity, and the introduction of errors in subsequent editing, than the alternatives. Logical quotation was adopted in 2005, and has been the subject of perennial debate that has not changed this consensus. Why does the Manual of Style differentiate the hyphen (-), en dash (–), em dash (—), and minus sign (−)? Appropriate use of hyphens and dashes is as much a part of literate, easy-to-read writing as are correct spelling and capitalization. The "Insert" editing tools directly below the Misplaced Pages editing window provide immediate access to all these characters. Why does the Manual of Style recommend apostrophe+s for singular possessive of names ending in s? Most modern style guides treat names ending with s just like other singular nouns when forming the possessive. The few that do not propose mutually contradictory alternatives. Numerous discussions have led to the current MoS guidance (see discussions of 2004, 2005, 2005, 2006, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2008, 2008, 2009, 2009, 2009, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2017, 2017 (the RfC establishing the present consensus), 2018, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022). Why doesn't the Manual of Style always follow specialized practice? Although Misplaced Pages contains some highly technical content, it is written for a general audience. While specialized publications in a field, such as academic journals, are excellent sources for facts, they are not always the best sources for or examples of how to present those facts to non-experts. When adopting style recommendations from external sources, the Manual of Style incorporates a substantial number of practices from technical standards and field-specific academic style guides; however, Misplaced Pages defaults to preferring general-audience sources on style, especially when a specialized preference may conflict with most readers' expectations, and when different disciplines use conflicting styles.

Discussions on this page often lead to previous arguments being restated. Please read recent comments, look in the archives, and review the FAQ before commenting.

Section sizes Section size for Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style (157 sections) Section name Byte count Section total (Top) 2,657 2,657 Retaining existing styles 2,787 2,787 Article titles, sections, and headings 137 12,678 Article titles 3,406 3,406 Section organization 4,752 4,752 Section headings 3,573 4,383 Heading-like material 810 810 National varieties of English 847 6,626 Consistency within articles 1,230 1,230 Opportunities for commonality 1,882 1,882 Strong national ties to a topic 1,414 1,414 Retaining the existing variety 1,253 1,253 Capital letters 648 18,724 Capitalization of The 984 984 Titles of works 1,232 1,232 Titles of people 780 780 Religions, deities, philosophies, doctrines 4,974 4,974 Calendar items 701 701 Animals, plants, and other organisms 5,616 5,616 Celestial bodies 1,249 1,249 Compass points 1,203 1,203 Proper names versus generic terms 1,337 1,337 Ligatures 495 495 Abbreviations 774 8,129 Write first occurrences in full 640 640 Plural forms 245 245 Punctuation and spacing 1,175 1,175 US and U.S. 1,918 1,918 Circa 279 279 Avoid unwarranted use 662 662 Do not invent 874 874 HTML tags and templates 383 383 Ampersand 1,179 1,179 Italics 105 6,366 Emphasis 1,133 1,133 Titles 572 572 Words as words 1,320 1,320 Non-English words 751 751 Scientific names 499 499 Quotations in italics 581 581 Italics within quotations 767 767 Effect on nearby punctuation 638 638 Quotations 1,355 16,636 Original wording 3,026 3,026 Point of view 1,234 1,234 Typographic conformity 5,818 5,818 Attribution 438 438 Quotations within quotations 94 94 Linking 483 483 Block quotations 3,049 3,049 Non-English quotations 1,139 1,139 Punctuation 203 76,952 Apostrophes 2,184 2,184 Quotation marks 394 13,595 Quotation characters 1,035 1,035 Double or single 1,234 1,234 For a quotation within a quotation 869 869 Article openings 729 729 Punctuation before quotations 2,023 2,023 Names and titles 1,331 1,331 Punctuation inside or outside 3,717 3,717 Quotation marks and external links 940 940 Quotation marks and internal links 1,323 1,323 Brackets and parentheses 3,366 4,571 Brackets and linking 1,205 1,205 Ellipses 2,939 2,939 Commas 4,876 8,072 Serial commas 3,196 3,196 Colons 1,868 1,868 Semicolons 3,331 5,721 Semicolon before "however" 2,390 2,390 Hyphens 9,985 9,985 Dashes 939 16,164 In article titles 759 759 In running text 2,195 12,352 In ranges that might otherwise be expressed with to or through 3,063 3,063 In compounds when the connection might otherwise be expressed with to, versus, and, or between 5,212 5,212 Instead of a hyphen, use an en dash when applying a prefix or suffix to a compound that itself includes a space, dash or hyphen 1,297 1,297 To separate parts of an item in a list 585 585 Other uses for en dashes 543 543 Other uses for em dashes 966 966 Other dashes 605 605 Slashes (strokes) 3,341 3,948 And/or 607 607 Symbols 595 595 Number (pound, hash) sign and numero 2,310 2,310 Terminal punctuation 737 737 Spacing 512 512 Consecutive punctuation marks 1,151 1,151 Punctuation and footnotes 2,179 2,179 Punctuation after formulae 218 218 Dates and time 361 5,083 Time of day 794 794 Dates 1,033 1,033 Months 323 323 Seasons 774 774 Years and longer periods 1,080 1,080 Current 718 718 Numbers 1,884 1,884 Currencies 1,637 1,637 Units of measurement 2,737 2,737 Common mathematical symbols 2,606 2,606 Grammar and usage 62 12,759 Possessives 158 1,918 Singular nouns 975 975 Plural nouns 523 523 Official names 262 262 Pronouns 104 5,804 First-person pronouns 1,494 1,494 Second-person pronouns 2,306 2,306 Third-person pronouns 1,900 1,900 Plurals 2,005 2,005 Verb tense 2,970 2,970 Vocabulary 98 22,675 Contractions 476 476 Gender-neutral language 1,692 1,692 Contested vocabulary 256 256 Instructional and presumptuous language 2,578 2,578 Subset terms 618 618 Identity 1,957 3,604 Gender identity 1,647 1,647 Non-English terms 301 8,016 Terms without common usage in English 1,547 1,547 Terms with common usage in English 400 400 Spelling and romanization 4,917 4,917 Other non-English concerns 851 851 Technical language 1,961 1,961 Geographical items 3,376 3,376 Media files 69 2,791 Images 313 313 Other media 181 181 Avoid using images to display text 884 884 Captions 526 1,344 Formatting of captions 818 818 Bulleted and numbered lists 1,552 1,552 Links 10 1,750 Wikilinks 1,411 1,411 External links 329 329 Miscellaneous 18 13,328 Keep markup simple 1,219 1,219 Formatting issues 1,016 2,981 Color coding 1,245 1,245 Indentation 720 720 Controlling line breaks 2,471 2,471 Scrolling lists and collapsible content 3,164 3,164 Invisible comments 1,554 2,817 How to add an invisible comment 1,263 1,263 Pronunciation 658 658 See also 1,199 4,870 Guidance 1,242 1,242 Tools 300 300 Other community standards 523 523 Guidelines within the Manual of Style 310 1,606 Names 1,296 1,296 Notes 24 24 References 28 28 Further reading 1,206 1,206 Total 226,980 226,980

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Manual of Style This page falls within the scope of the Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style, a collaborative effort focused on enhancing clarity, consistency, and cohesiveness across the Manual of Style (MoS) guidelines by addressing inconsistencies, refining language, and integrating guidance effectively.Manual of StyleWikipedia:WikiProject Manual of StyleTemplate:WikiProject Manual of StyleManual of Style This page falls under the contentious topics procedure and is given additional attention, as it closely associated to the English Misplaced Pages Manual of Style, and the article titles policy. Both areas are subjects of debate. Contributors are urged to review the awareness criteria carefully and exercise caution when editing. For information on Misplaced Pages's approach to the establishment of new policies and guidelines, refer to WP:PROPOSAL. Additionally, guidance on how to contribute to the development and revision of Misplaced Pages policies of Misplaced Pages's policy and guideline documents is available, offering valuable insights and recommendations. Misplaced Pages Help Top‑importance This page is within the scope of the Misplaced Pages Help Project, a collaborative effort to improve Misplaced Pages's help documentation for readers and contributors. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks. To browse help related resources see the Help Menu or Help Directory. Or ask for help on your talk page and a volunteer will visit you there.Misplaced Pages HelpWikipedia:Help ProjectTemplate:Misplaced Pages Help ProjectHelp Top This page has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.

Style discussions elsewhere

This section is pinned and will not be automatically archived.

Add a link to new discussions at top of list and indicate what kind of discussion it is (move request, RfC, open discussion, deletion discussion, etc.). Follow the links to participate, if interested. Move to Concluded when decided, and summarize conclusion. Please keep this section at the top of the page.

Current

(newest on top)

• Talk:Armenian-occupied territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh#Requested move 18 December 2024 - A MOS:AT/WP:AT question
• Talk:United States Virgin Islands's at-large congressional district#Requested move 10 December 2024 – Plural possessive MOS:POSS question
• Talk:Second Italo-Ethiopian War#Flags in the infobox
• Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style/Biography#Proposal to import a line-item from WP:JUDAISMSTYLE into MOS:BIO – to use policy-based material on "Christ" found in an essay but more useful in a guideline. (Nov. 2024)
• Misplaced Pages talk:Article titles#Request for comment on the relationship between WP:CRITERIA and WP:TITLEFORMAT – Has stylistic implications (punctuation, leading "The", etc.) despite not being intrisically an MoS matter. (Nov. 2024)
• Talk:Battle of Tory Island#Infoboxflags - use of flag icons in infobox per MOS:INFOBOXFLAGS (Sep.–Nov. 2024) – See also prior Talk:Sino-Soviet border conflict#Belligerents flags.

Pretty stale but not "concluded":

• RfC needed on issue raised at Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style/Biography/2024 archive#British peer titles in infoboxes (June–July 2004, archived without resolution). Presently, the royalty/nobility wikiprojects have imposed putting British peerage titles in place of names in biographical infoboxes, against MOS:BIO, MOS:INFOBOX, and the template's documentation. Either the community will accept this as a best practice and the guidelines changed to accomodate it, or it should be undone and the infobox used consistently and as-intended.
• A MOS:JOBTITLES revision RfC needs to be drafted, based on Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style/Biography/2023 archive#JOBTITLES simplification proposal (Dec. 2023 – Jan. 2024, archived without resolution). JOBTITLES remains a point of confusion and conflict, which the guidelines are supposed to prevent not cause.
• Misplaced Pages talk:Naming conventions (companies)#Use of comma and abbreviation of Incorporated – Involves MOS:TM (plus WP:COMMONNAME, WP:OFFICIALNAME, WP:POLICYFORK). Covers more than thread name implies. (Dec. 2023 – Jan. 2024) Result: Stalled without resolution; at least 3 options identified which should be put to an RfC.
• Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style/Islam-related articles#NPOV usage of "the prophet Muhammad" or "the prophet" – Involves MOS:HONORIFIC, MOS:DOCTCAPS, WP:NPOV, WP:CHERRYPICKING, etc. (Sep. 2023 –) Result: Still unresolved, though consensus seems to lean toward permitting lower-case "prophet" when needed for disambiguation, but no agreement yet on specific guideline wording.
• Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style/Tables#Proposal to discourage vertically oriented ("sideways") column headers – Specifically in tables, possibly elsewhere. MOS:UNITNAMES (at the table "General guidelines on use of units") has an example of existing use that is being challenged, and material at Help:Table is also at issue. (Dec. 2023 –) Result: Still unresolved.
• Help talk:Table/Archive 9#Indenting tables – Help page is conflicting with MOS:DLIST and MOS:ACCESS on a technical point. (Aug. 2023 – Jan. 2024) Result: No objection to fixing it, and a suggestion to just do it WP:BOLDly, but the work actually has to be done.

Capitalization-specific:

Move requests:

• Talk:Poison Ivy (character)#Requested move 6 January 2025 – Does the capitalized (undisambiguated) "Ivy" have a primary topic?
• Talk:L'argent des autres#Requested move 5 January 2025 – Capitalize "argent"?
• Talk:Slab-grave culture#Requested move 28 December 2024 – Capitalize Slab Grave?
• Talk:1925 Tri-State tornado#Requested move 26 December 2024 – Was this the "1925 Tri-State tornado" or "Great Tri-State Tornado" or something else?
• Talk:Tri-State tornado outbreak#Requested move 18 December 2024 – Was this a "Tri-State tornado outbreak" or a "tri-state tornado outbreak"?
• Talk:Island Cove (Cavite)#Requested move 17 December 2024 – Should this be called the Island Cove POGO Hub or Island Cove POGO hub?

Other discussions:

• Talk:Fullbore target rifle#Major rework – Is it too risky to ask people who are carrying firearms to use lowercase?
• Misplaced Pages talk:Article titles#Request for comment on the relationship between WP:CRITERIA and WP:TITLEFORMAT
• Talk:Dorothy Kilgallen#Capitalization of the word mass – "her funeral Mass" vs "her funeral mass"
• Talk:Julian (emperor)#Capitalization of "emperor" – should "emperor" be capped when referring to a specific person?
• Misplaced Pages talk:Naming conventions (ethnicities and tribes)#Indigenous – continuation of an RM discussion on capitalization of "indigenous"
• Talk:War on terror#Capitalisation of "global war on terrorism" in prose
• Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style/Music#THEBAND disambiguators – what to do about "The" in parenthetical disambiguators?
• Talk:F1NN5TER#Capitalization – Should the online persona be called "F1NN5TER", "F1nn5ter" or "Finnster"?
• Talk:Union Jack#Case consistency – Union Flag, or Union flag?
• Misplaced Pages talk:Naming conventions (geographic names)#Capitalisation of "oblast" when used as the name of a Ukrainian administrative division – May affect other administrative divisions (e.g. raion) and other nations for which such terms are used

Pretty stale but not "concluded":

• Talk:Upstate New York#Other plausible capitalization issue – Capitalization of "Upstate" New York.
• Talk:Southern Italy#Lowercase or uppercase? – Capitalisation of "southern". Also "northern" and "central" in related articles.
• Misplaced Pages talk:Naming conventions (capitalization)#Capitalization of geologic names – Despite being opened on an NC talk page, this is about usage in general not just in our article titles.
• Talk:Fall of Saigon#Names section and capitalisation – capitalisation of Vietnamese language names and capitalisation of their English translations?

Concluded

Retain or remove citation indicators in quoted text?

Is it acceptable to remove citation indicators – ¹ or (Gorgon, 1993) – that appear within quoted text (this would be to improve readability). I'm not referring to citing quoted material, but to citation marks within quoted material. Thanks! Tsavage (talk) 12:18, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Yes. References to footnotes are usually silently omitted, as they are not a part of the text flow anyway. Gawaon (talk) 11:52, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. Is this addressed in the MoS? I couldn't find mention MOS:QUOTE. This would seem a common situation when citing academic sources. Tsavage (talk) 15:58, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

I added it while doing some other cleanup. It's entirely normal to silently (not with "...") remove inline citations from quoted material, since WP isn't providing the source info, and to the reader it will be just be frustrating (they'll go looking for "Smith 1997" or whatever, and not find it). If our article is also citing the same source, then linking the quoted citation to our citation might be useful, but shouldn't be seen as manadatory. A general principle of quotation (inline or block) is to only quote what is pertinent, what is contextually necessary for our purposes; otherwise we're wandering into over-quotation which is both poor writing and apt to be a copyright issue unless the source is public-domain.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:55, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. Your addition is helpful and doesn't seem to overcomplicate things. I realized the primary aim with quoted material is not to forensically reproduce it from the source (as I'd kinda been doing), it's to accurately represent the meaning as it appears in the full context of the source. Which makes minor silent adjustments for readability fine, provided meaning is strictly preserved – comprehension and judgement are of course required. Tsavage (talk) 17:06, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

Stale advice: slashes have been line-breaks since 2005 (Unicode 4.1.0)

§ Slashes (strokes) says "On the other hand, if two long words are connected by an unspaced slash, an {{wbr}} added after the slash will allow a linebreak at that point."

I've recently tweaked a couple of articles doing this, and realized that my browser will allow breaks after slashes without any special markup. This is part of the current Unicode line-break algorithm. Looking into the archives, it was added to support breaking URLs between Unicode 4.0.1 (2004-03-30) and Unicode 4.1.0 (2005-08-29).

It's been 19 years. Do we still need this advice? I ask because some parts of WP are aggressively backward-compatible: {{wbr}} still expands to <wbr/>&#8203; since apparently IE7 and earlier don't support <wbr/>. But I seriously doubt that WP is consistently backward-compatible; I'm sure there are lots of more recent edits where the editors didn't see a problem with long /-separated lists on their browsers and didn't do anything tricky. 97.102.205.224 (talk) 17:20, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

Look at Good articles (or former Good articles) from years ago they read like they do now and it just shows that the Manual of Style will stay exactly the same as it has been for 18 years unfortunately. This0k (talk) 02:45, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

Input needed on disagreement over where the lifespan goes in relation to a baronetcy or a peerage title

Muéro and I disagree on where the lifespan goes in relation to a name that includes a baronetcy or a peerage title. It started with Muéro removing honorifics from the lead of several articles on peers (many of which I have on my watchlist), following the recently changed guidelines at WP:POSTNOM. This is not controversial, but in their edits, he also removed a comma unrelated to the honorifics, but called for by WP:COMMA ("Don't let other punctuation distract you from the need for a comma, especially when the comma collides with a bracket or parenthesis").

I pointed this out to them, and they acknowledged the error, but then they instead started to leave another comma in place, a comma that was required by the now obsolete guideline. I can't find the guideline in the history of this article, but it went something like this:

For people with a baronetcy or a peerage, the post-nominals should be separated from each other, and from the name, by a comma, for consistency's sake. (my underscore)

That is the comma Muéro left in place, and the result was this:

John Doe, 1st Baron Doe, (1 January 1801 – 31 December 1881), was a Whig politician ...

I pointed out to Muéro that this is also wrong, and that punctuation rarely – if ever – precedes a parenthetical expression. But they are adamant that it should be there.

So here we are. I'd like input from the project, and I'm sure Muéro would like that too.

The discussion originated on Muéro's talk page, but I'm copying it here, and closing it there, while notifying them.

The discussion on Muéro's talk page

Hello.

Thank you for your contributions. Regarding your edit of Frederick Curzon, 7th Earl Howe, and similar edits removing postnoms per the new guidelines, please don't remove the comma after the parenthetical birth–death expression. It's supposed to be there per WP:COMMA: "Don't let other punctuation distract you from the need for a comma, especially when the comma collides with a bracket or parenthesis".

Thank you. HandsomeFella (talk) 15:50, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Ah, good catch. I can't wait for the day when nobility titles are also excluded entirely, which would make that comma unnecessary anyway. Muéro 15:58, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Hello again.

Thank you for your understanding. Re: your latest edits, you're now leaving a comma in place that shouldn't be there.

Nathaniel Charles Jacob Rothschild, 4th Baron Rothschild, (29 April 1936 – 26 February 2024),
                                  ^                     ^                                   ^
                                  A                     B                                   C

Commas A and C are paired, comma B should be removed along with the postnoms that followed it. Commas rarely precede parentheses.

Cheers.

HandsomeFella (talk) 17:52, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

I don't think that makes sense. If someone doesn't have a nobility/royalty title, there is no comma before or after the life span. When adding the nobility/royalty title, the pair of commas should go before and after the nobility/royalty title. Why, when adding the nobility/royalty title, would the life span get looped into the comma pair? Muéro 17:56, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Step by step

I think it makes perfect sense. You don't put a parenthetical expression after punctuation, do you? Let me take this step by step. Normally, the first sentence would be something like this:

John Doe was a Whig politician ...

Now let's add that he was a peer:

John Doe, 1st Baron Doe, was a Whig politician ...
        ^              ^
        A              B

The commas A and B are paired, i.e. the "parenthetical" title is set off at both ends (unless when there is other punctuation, like at the end of sentence). Let's see what happens without the closing (second) comma:

John Doe, 1st Baron Doe was a Whig politician ...

If the commas aren't paired, the sentence reads "1st Baron Doe was a Whig politician", and "John Doe" is left dangling at the start of the sentence.

Now, let's add the life span. Where do we add it? Before punctuation.

John Doe, 1st Baron Doe (1 January 1801 – 31 December 1881), was a Whig politician ...
        ^                                                  ^
        A                                                  B

The commas A and B are still paired. See?

HandsomeFella (talk) 23:04, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

The nobility title is a nonessential appositive. Commas go before and after a nonessential appositive. I'm assuming you don't consider the lifespan, which is never set off by commas in a Misplaced Pages article, to be a part of the same nonessential appositive somehow, right? If it's not included in the nobility title nonessential appositive, then it goes outside the commas. Muéro 00:04, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

No, it doesn't. Sure, the lifespan parenthetical isn't part of the appositive, but neither are the commas, which is demonstrated by the fact that at, if the name and title occurred at the end of a sentence, there wouldn't be a comma; there would be a period/full stop:

... Joseph Smith bequeathed the manor to his nephew, John Doe, 1st Baron Doe (1801–1881).

You wouldn't place the parenthetical outside the sentence like this, would you?

... Joseph Smith bequeathed the manor to his nephew, John Doe, 1st Baron Doe. (1801–1881)

Ergo: normal rules apply, which is that punctuation doesn't precede a parenthetical. (The exception being when there is a complete sentence inside the parentheses, in which case punctuation occurs both at the end of the preceding sentence, i.e. before the parenthetical, and before the closing parenthetical, as shown here.)

Commas go before and after an appositive (unless there is other punctuation), but that does not necessarily mean immediately after.

HandsomeFella (talk) 10:29, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

"Punctuation doesn't precede a parenthetical" is not a rule at all. It's just something you made up.

If the parenthetical were being applied to the nobility title, then the parenthetical should go within the commas that set off the nobility title. But the parenthetical is being applied to the actual name of the person, which came before the nonessential appositive that is set off by commas.

If you dislike the placement of the nobility title between the name and the lifespan parenthetical, I wouldn't disagree. I'd happily remove the nobility title entirely from the lead sentence (or heck, the whole article). Or put the lifespan parenthetical first, and then the nobility title. But wherever the nobility appositive is being stuck, it gets set off by commas. That's the rule. Muéro 13:38, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

This one is simple: a comma is never placed immediately before other punctuation. Instead it's placed after them or, in case or semicolons and periods, omitted altogether. While MOS:COMMA doesn't say so quite explicitly (supposedly treating it as one of these common sense things that everybody already knows?), it gives an example of how to do it correctly: "Burke and Wills, fed by locals (on beans, fish, and ngardu), survived for a few months." (With the second parenthetical comma after the closing bracket.) So, by analogy, "John Doe, 1st Baron Doe (1 January 1801 – 31 December 1881), was a Whig politician" is indeed correct. Gawaon (talk) 08:58, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Concur with the OP and with Gawaon on the typographical point; we don't use a comma right before a round-bracketed parenthetical, nor does much of anyone else in the world. One might make an argument that "logically", in the way a computer program would approach logic, there should or could be one there, and this is the direction Muéro has been going, but human language does not operate on such a basis, being a matter of convention combined with expediency, not a matter of a JSON-like syntax in which a comma that really should not be needed to parse the material must be present anyway or the operation will fail.

That said, we do have several interrelating issues in play in this titles and post-noms sector that are worth cataloguing and considering in some detail:

1. Something like "Xerxes Youill Zounds, Grand Poobah of Elbonia–Brobdingnag (3 May 1571 – 24 July 1644), was ..." is always indicating the life-span dates. If there is a need to specify the duration of a peerage, including a change in titles, that should be done in plain English in the article body, and is not going to be lead-sentence or even lead-section material. It's body material, like "Upon the death of his father, Zounds became 3rd poobah of Elbonia on 12 December 1629. He was elevated to 1st grand poobah of Elbonia–Brobdingnag on 20 June 1639 by High King Korki IX of Kerblachistan. Zounds was also the bishop of Lilliput from ca. 1630 to 14 February 1633, when he was defrocked by the archbishop of Elbonia."
2. As an anti-classist myself, I still have to observe/concede that "don't include any titles or post-noms because they are classist" is not a viable position. WP is not a socio-political activism tool, and when any such title or honor (whether earned or hereditary or otherwise) is pertinent to a notable article subject, it should be covered, more prominently the more important it is within the context of their notability. (See below for an idea toward suppressing lead inclusion when not related to notability at all but a late-coming add-on to the pile of someone's life aachievements.)
3. There's a been a very long-standing de facto consensus to always include peerage titles and important post-nominals (but not academic or professional titles or post nominals like "Dr" or "PhD", or guild/union stuff like "ASC", "PGA") in the lead sentence. Virtually every applicable article has been written this way.
4. A recent-ish RfC (I seem to have lost the link to it – help me out?) with probably much too low a turnout upended part of this, and now has us remove the post-nominals from the lead sentence. This has not sat well, and actually introduces some writing problems that the RfC participants did not anticipate. For example, WP does not, except in an article on the subject being abbreviated, introduce an acronym/initialism unless it is going to be re-used later in the same article. But if our bio subject's investiture as a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath is covered in the body only, the point at which this is done has no need to a "KCB" appearing at that point, since "KCB" is used as a post-nominal not otherwise and would not be re-used later in the article; the result is that the "KCB" that applies to this person has no logical place to go in the article any longer, since it was actually only pertinent in the lead sentence, attached to the person's name. We could do something very awkward like state that this knighthood entitles/entitled this person to use "Sir" or "Dame" and the post-nominal "KCB", but this sort of blather would have to be repeated throughout many thousands of articles, and was already very concisely conveyed by the original lead sentence without having to spell it out and micro-WP:COATRACK the bio article with detailia about how a particular order's nomenclatural rules operate. Simply showing rather than telling was better.

   So, this really should be re-RfCed, at a higher-profile venue like WP:VPPOL so we are certain that the community at large really wants to impose this lead rule change and its problems all in the name of shaving a few characters off the lead sentence. "The postnoms will be in the infobox anyway" isn't the (or an) answer, since not all bios have infoboxes, and there is staunch resistance to adding them in many cases. A potential compromise might be to not include postnoms in lead sentence but in an infobox when one is present and has a parameter for it.

5. Even without revisiting that with a better RfC, the present wording at MOS:POSTNOM is daft: "post-nominal letters may be included in the main body of the article, but not in the lead sentence of the article". This has already lead to dispute about whether it means post-noms are banned from the entire lead or only the literal lead sentence, because it only addresses the lead sentence and the post-lead-section article body. The correct answer (if you look at the RfC discussion and the alleged consensus arising from it) is that this should instead read something like "post-nominal letters may be included, but not in the lead sentence of the article"; there was no consenus to ban them from the entire lead section. However, this runs into the problem above: Because post-nominal letters are used directly with full names, and generally only upon first introduction, there effectively is no practical place for them, in the lead section or in the article body, other than the lead sentence (except arguably in an infobox if it's there and has a place for this information).
6. Next, there's a misapprehension here (evidenced in the beginning of this thread) that this anti-postnom RfC result somehow also means to remove peerage and nobility titles from the lead. It does not. They are a different category of thing and were not addressed in that RfC. It is possible that a consensus might be reached to remove peerage titles when they are not pertinent to the subject's notability (e.g. that would have been the case with Christopher Guest had he remained an actor/director/producer only and not taken a seat in the House of Lords). There are also many life baronetcies created late in the life of the recipients and to little public awareness; a case can be made to exclude them from the lead sentence and probably from the entire lead section. But this is something for a consensus discussion on an article-by-article basis, or for a new RfC if we wanted a categoric rule of some kind about it.
7. A side issue is that some parties from the nobility and peerage wikiprojects have, by WP:FAITACCOMPLI behavior, programmatically usurped the |name= parameter of {{infobox person}} and its offshoots, abusing it to hold the peerage title, when that really belongs in |postnom= since it is in fact post-nominal (it's just not a post-nominal abbreviation). See Margaret Thatcher for the typical absurd result. Because this has been done to thousands and thousands of articles and involves yet another "wikiproject rebellion" against the norms of the entire rest of the project, I suspect this is probably best addressed with another WP:VPPOL RfC so there can be no doubt about the community consensus level of the result (which will obviously be to stop having our infobox blatantly lie to our readers that Margaret Thatcher's name is "The Baroness Thatcher". For the Thatcher case, the obvious solution is: |name=Margaret Hilda Thatcher|honorific_suffix=Baroness Thatcher<br />{{Post-nominals|country=GBR|size=100%|LG|OM|DStJ|PC|FRS|HonFRSC}} , and this is what agrees with the lead of the article. (Note lack of "The" before "Baroness".)

   These infoboxes are also failing MOS:HONORIFIC by including honorific salutation phrases like "The Right Honorourable" that are not part of the name in any sense, but used when writing a letter to such a person or when introducing them as speaker, and so on; that sort of information does not belong in a bio article (much less thousands of them robotically) but in an article on forms-of-address etiquette and probably again in the article on the title (baronet or whatever the case may be).

There are probably other issues to address, but this is a lot already.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:42, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

Any objections to extending MOS:TIES to all nations and regions?

Currently MOS:TIES qualifies itself to English-speaking nations. However, in an increasingly multicultural world with English emerging as the lingua franca, at minimum in the Western world, why qualify this part of the MoS like that, ESPECIALLY when it also impacts on MOS:UNIT? For example, the European Union has 24 official languages, including English, and multilingualism is one of its founding principles.

Would it not make sense to extend MOS:TIES to nations (and regions) irrespective of whether they traditionally speak English or not? Because I can see how saying to someone that embraces multilingualism and values Europe's rich linguistic diversity wishing to contribute to an article on a topic with strong ties to their nation or region in the EU, where English is an official language, that in this case that tie doesn’t count (and someone else gets to decide) might be perceived as ... well ... rude and arrogant, which isn't just unnecessary but also unproductive. Would the article not benefit from including anyone with a strong tie to it?

I must note I would prefer if there was an established international variant, but I also find it practical not to have to waste time and effort trying to work out whether in a given article its meter or metre, organise or organize, or SI first and then imperial, or imperial first and then SI. Because getting it wrong just causes unnecessary consternation, especially if the article is inhabited by one or more "Shelobs". Elrondil (talk) 06:41, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm not in favor of this idea. TIES is an exceptional case that should be used only when it's very clear; the main rule is RETAIN.

In practice I think this proposal comes down to "don't use American English in articles about Europe". I don't agree with that. --Trovatore (talk) 06:52, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

@Trovatore: The proposal doesn’t suggest it no longer needs to be clear, nor that that main rule is no longer retain. It simply proposes that MORE voices are heard.

As for the “don’t use American English in Europe” bit ... that would then only happen if most voices then want that. The solution surely isn’t “but I don’t like that, so let’s exclude them from the set of voices allowed to speak”. Fear not, they may choose American, who knows. Elrondil (talk) 06:21, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Also not in favor for the reasons cited by Trovatore. Doremo (talk) 07:16, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

I do object to this.

Moreover, from what I understand it's a perennial suggestion, so I recommend perusing the last major flare-up of it from June, wherein I happen to embark on a journey from the exact wrong position all the way to the right one, filling your heart with hope for a better future as you follow my progress. Remsense ‥ 论 07:23, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

If it keeps coming up, perhaps there is something there.

However, you do highlight its more complex than I originally thought, so back to the drawing board 🤔. Elrondil (talk) 06:24, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Not a chance. The purpose of MOS:TIES is entirely, only, solely about English-language dialects that exist at a more or less national level and in a formal register suitable for encyclopedia writing. Under no circumstances would we accept an English pidgin/creole or some vaguely identifiable informal habits of English-as-a-second-language users in some country or region as a "variety of English" to accept for encyclopedia writing. If you encounter "Franglais", "Spanglish", "Deutchlish", etc., in any of our articles it should be normalized on the spot to whichever form of standardized English suits the subject best if there are strong MOS:TIES, or to the form that the article already most closely matches (British, American, Canadian, or some other dialect of a country with majority or official and large minority English usage in a formal register). Another way of looking at this: There is no strong tie between Finland and any form of English. Even the "Well, it at least shouldn't be American, but British, because the UK is part of Europe and the US is not" sort of argument fails, because there's more than one national dialect of English in Europe (Irish, for now, and probably Scottish if they have another independence referendum). If there's not a particular encyclopedia-appropriate variety/dialect of English in widespread use in a country, then that country by definition has no strong tie to any such particular variety.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:22, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: Thank you for stating very clearly and firmly that the purpose of MOS:TIES is entirely, only, solely about English-language dialects, because THAT means my primary concern of how it relates to MOS:UNIT is a non-issue!

For the record, I did not, and still don’t, propose that “Franglais” and so on become accepted English variants. Because that would be insane, pointless and not useful. Elrondil (talk) 06:46, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

If this is something to do with promotion of crore and lakh in articles that pertain to India, there's already a big thread about that at WT:MOSNUM (again), and last I looked the consensus wasn't really changing: they're permissible as secondary units, but always need to be converted because they don't mean anything to anyone outside India and parts of its immediate neighbors (and of course among first-gen Indic diaspora). Maybe the tide has shifted in that discussion; I last looked at it about a week ago.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:50, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

No. I wasn’t aware of that thread. Elrondil (talk) 06:52, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

The thread to which you refer is “RfC Indian numbering conventions”? Elrondil (talk) 06:59, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

I don’t think there is any real overlap with the “RfC Indian numbering conventions” thread.

I also think MOS:TIES is a dog’s breakfast, but happy to leave it alone at this time.

Are there any objections then to apply the direction from SMcCandlish that the purpose of MOS:TIES is entirely, only, solely about English-language dialects to MOS:UNITS and decouple "respect the principle of 'strong national ties'" from MOS:TIES? For example, change it to "respect the underlying principle of strong national ties as also used in MOS:TIES but in a different context”, and then also qualify the following with only?

• In non-scientific articles with strong ties to the United States only, the …
• In non-scientific articles with strong ties to the United Kingdom only, the …
• In all other articles, the …

Elrondil (talk) 08:34, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Well, you're been so vague about why you are asking these things, what rationale you could have for making up a new rule or changing any existing one, without any reference to an ongoing and important on-site problem, that all one has been left with is guesswork based on encounters with extant or recent discussions that seem like they could be pertinent. "Are there any objections"?: Yes., I can think of a number:

1. There is no clear rationale for what you're proposing, much less a consensus to do it. Substantive changes to policies and guidelines (WP:P&G) need consensus or they will not be accepted (unless they, rarely, hit upon something that needed to adjusted and no one else noticed until now, which isn't the case here).
2. There are strong rationales against it, most obviously:

   A. Your implicit notion that units of measure have no connection to dialect (or "variety" as WP likes to say) is not correct.

   B. Even if it were, it'd be immaterial. The next implicit idea in your proposal (quite central to it really) is that if P&G page X reiterates a general principle from another, Y, and cites the latter for the explanation, such that X applies that principle to X's circumstances because they are reasonably analogous to Y's, that this somehow creates a bureaucratic rules-chain dependency in which every aspect of the context of the cited origin of the principle in Y must also be applicable to the citing circumstances of X. Nothing on Misplaced Pages works that way at all. Cf. WP:WIKILAWYER: it's a mistake to try to interpret our P&G as essentially a legal system (or as something like a procedural programming language, or a chain of dependencies in building software from source code; more than one analogy works).

   C. Because of point B, and because of the guideline's current "where applicable" wording (which is there for a reason and meaningful), your first rewrite idea, of tacking on a bunch of "respect the underlying principle of strong national ties as also used in MOS:TIES but in a different context" verbiage it entirely superfluous. The two versions convey the same meaning, because it is already understood that the principle (not the detail-by-detail contextual specifics) of TIES is being applied at UNITS. This is the way our entire P&G system operates. It wouldn't really be possible for it to be any other way. If UNITS was literally just restating TIES, down to the specifics of exactly what TIES covers, then UNITS would be redundant (in this regard) with TIES, and its wording about this issue would've been deleted long ago and replaced with a simple cross-reference to TIES without further comment. The kind of exemplary and contextual more-than-crossreferencing done at UNITS is entirely normal. And important: an editor looking for "what to do about units" is unlikely to instead stumble upon "what to do about national-level usage disputes", and so would be unlikely to find the TIES principles and then be certain how to contextually apply them (if at all) to units, without being basically an expert in our style guide the way some Tolkien fans learn Elvish.

   D. The next bit of suggested rewriting is to inject "only" into two line items, but this change would have a nonsensical and undesirable result in two ways: It would make those items applicable under no circumstances to anywhere but the US and the UK, respectively (even to former UK colonies with English- and units-usage norms virtually indistinguishable from British in an encyclopedic register); and it would necessitate (to fix that new problem) expanding that into a long list of every country with anything that WP would consider a "national variety of English" with pertinent unit-usage norms. The purpose of those two examples is as examples (not as an exhaustive list) of how to approach these matters. The examples were chosen because they settled previously recurrent disputes. So, what long-term, recurrent, serious problem can you point to that you think your changes would resolve? The examples are not there to serve as the beginning of an ever-growing rulebook to address every imaginable case with a new micro-topical line item to thump. The purpose of giving a general principle and providing some prominent examples is to obviate the need to have a pile of micro-rules. (MOS:NUM is already too detailed as it is.)

3. The long-term stability of these guidelines is very important, because even small but meaningful/operative changes to them can affect many thousands up to potentially millions of articles, for reasons that almost always resolve to trivial and subjective peccadilloes. That cascading-wave-of-unneeded-changes problem (and all the fighting the endless trivial tweaks would generate) is never more of a danger than when a national-level and frequent usage matter is at issue (and literally millions of our articles do have measures with units in them). See also WP:MOSBLOAT: If MoS, after 20-odd years, doesn't already have a rule about something, then it needs to not have a rule about it, because it is not necessary for the project to do what it does successfully, and MoS is already way too long.
4. Your "I also think MOS:TIES is a dog's breakfast, but happy to leave it alone at this time" approach does not bode well. Our policies and guidelines don't exist as hills to die on. The purpose of these style guidelines is (aside from the main one of producing intelligible and consistent content for our readers) dissuading style-warring behavior. Arriving with the idea that the rules are broken and that at some forthcoming time you're going to fix them is antithetical to their purpose and to the needs of the community. It largely doesn't matter what any particular line-item in MoS sets out (except when there is objectively a reader-clarity improvement offered by one option over another), only that it sets out, and long-term retains, something that addresses a recurrent dispute pattern and brings it mostly (hopefully entirely) to an end, and/or that it produces better content for our readers – even if that "something" is arbitrary or is a compromise that can't please everyone. Just as a word to the wise, MOS:ENGVAR (including TIES) is pretty much the hardest-fought consensus compromise reached in MoS's history, and is also one of the oldest and most stable, so if you think you're going to make serious changes to it, you are very mistaken. It's like going to Canada and declaring your mission is to undo the country's approach to French and English as official languages.

This might all come off as harsh, but WP:Policy writing is hard, and the vast majority of proposals to change any P&G are off the mark. There are many devils in many details (thus the length of this), with a lot of nuanced interrelations between different rules (or advice or best practices or whatever you want to call them). Most of the real kinks were worked out long ago. Those that remain are subject to long-term dispute that hasn't produced a workable compromise. There is no such dispute about the material you want to change. And there are sometimes severe costs for making changes that are not vital to make.PS: I've tried hard to find a "yes" to put into this pile of "no", and there is one! Namely, your version is correct that the "scare quotes" around strong national ties shouldn't be there. I just went and removed them, so thanks for that. Otherwise, no element of your draft appears to be clearly an improvement. Here's the original wording: The choice of primary units depends on the circumstances, and should respect the principle of strong national ties, where applicable. Here's yours (presumably also keeping the original's first 10 words and the link): respect the underlying principle of strong national ties as also used in MOS:TIES but in a different context. Mentioning the other guideline by name is redundant with linking to it, and all our P&G pages are fairly (not entirely) consistent in, when practical, using plain English with links around pertinent terms rather than injecting page names. Mentioning it by shortcut in particular is "newbie-unfriendly" and wrongly presumes memorization of our shortcut strings. "Underlying" is a puff word and doesn't serve a concrete purpose in the sentence. (And underlying what? It has no clear downstream referent.) "As also used in" is more redundancy; if we're linking to TIES as the locus of the principle, it's already automatically understood that the principle is applied at the place we're linking to. "But in a different context" is a combination of redundancy with the implication of the link again, and quite odd wording: Why is there a "but" in this? (What it is contrasting against?) "Different" from what? Different in what way? And "context" is conceptually misused in this construction, in that the general principle at TIES is a meta-context, of all usage/style disputes pertaining to national-level English dialects, while use of units is a subset of that, a sub-context, not a conflicting/alternative context. Finally, unit usage is only sometimes a subset of the usage in a national variety of English, thus the original's "where applicable" – a key point that your version drops, despite it seeming to be central to the bee in your bonnet.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:54, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Introducing Scottish as an additional form of English would cause mayhem - or at least a shedload of future editing - here. We’ve already had a nationalist-driven push towards replacing ‘British’ with ‘English’ or ‘Scottish’ in bio articles, usually uncited and based purely on supposition or the subject’s birthplace. Fortunately, Scottish Independence appears to be receding as a prospect, at least in the short to medium term. MapReader (talk) 07:48, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

I don't disagree (and we had a real template at {{Use Scottish English}} in 2013, with an attempt to re-create it in 2016). Several years ago, I tried to get rid of all the "Use Foo English", and related, templates declaring "national varieties" that, in reality, are completely indistinguishable from general British English in an encyclopedic register, and could all collectively be covered by a "Use Commonwealth English" template. ENGVAR only applies to national (not subnational) varieties, and only those dialects that exist in distinct forms and with a formal register (by definition: if you can't write encyclopedia-appropriate material in a dialect, then it doesn't belong in our articles for any reason, so ENGVAR cannot be used to "protect" it from edits). But nationalistic sentiments won out in the end, and we still have all that claptrap, with ridiculous results like articles being tagged with {{Use Jamaican English}}, {{Use Singaporean English}}, etc. (Likewise we have no use of American-splitoff variants, either, like "Use Guam English", etc.) Too many editors who should know better and should think just a tiny bit harder have utterly mistaken the purpose of these as something like "national pride" flags to put on articles, in a verging-on-WP:OWN manner. These tags absolutely do not resolve to "write an article about Nigeria using colloquialisms and grammatical oddities found only in the informal speech and writing of English in Nigeria, which will be confusing to everyone else in the world". If someone tries that crap in response to such a template, rewrite the material per MOS:COMMONALITY and MOS:TONE.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:54, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

MOS:NOTGALLERY

At another talk page, I was writing an explanation of why articles should not be swamped in a plethora of images, planning to cite MOS:NOTGALLERY. Fortunately for once I checked first and found that it is just an alias for WP:NOTDB, not a statement that article spaces should not be mirrors of Commons.

Given that the majority of visitors do so on mobile phones, is there a case for an explicit policy that says that curation is essential, less is more?

Or would it be enough to change the target of NOTGALLERY to MOS:IMAGEREL (which might need a little expansion because right now it just says Images must be significant and relevant in the topic's context, not primarily decorative. They are often an important illustrative aid to understanding. When possible, find better images and improve captions instead of simply removing poor or inappropriate ones, especially on pages with few visuals. However, not every article needs images, and too many can be distracting. At least a reference to WP:ARTICLESIZE? (which is expressed in terms of word count, not megabytes, so would also need work). 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 17:48, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

I think IMAGEREL would be a better redirect target. I want this to point to guidance that images should be included selectively rather than overwhelming articles with images. NOTDB instead seems to be guidance that images should be relevant and accompanied by text, which is not enough to prevent big indiscriminate galleries. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:52, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

I've had second thoughts about this one. It is probably not wise to make NOTGALLERY an exception to the general rule that WP:NOTaaaaaaaa shortcuts all redirect to WP:Misplaced Pages is not. So the better plan is to add a short sentence to the current target to say that Misplaced Pages is not a database of images or a catalogue raisonné; those are among the functions of Wikimedia Commons. Image use in Misplaced Pages articles must comply with MOS:IMAGEREL. I will do that now.

IMAGEREL needs some work too, to make it even more explicit that to bury an article in a mass of images is sure way to ensure that nobody reads it. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 10:43, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

While some types of "galleries" should be avoided, articles on certain visual topics do benefit from many visual examples. I also do not think we should explicitly outlaw the catalogue raisonné model while allowing many other bibliographic lists. One size does not fit all, and such a change would need to be debated with the folks curating WP:NOT and those who work on visual topics. —Kusma (talk) 10:57, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Pending further discussion, I have removed the reference to catalogue raisonné from my amendment (so that it now reads simply Misplaced Pages articles are not a repository of images: image use in Misplaced Pages articles must comply with MOS:IMAGEREL. to item 4, "Photographs or media files".

I agree certainly that, in an article about an artist or an artistic movement, it is essential to illustrate the phases of their artistic development. That to me is clearly in keeping with IMAGEREL and wp:localconsensus can determine relevancy. But to include an image of every work in an artist's oeuvre? How is that a valid exception to NOTDB? (and likely a COPYVIO too). And why not show every putter manufactured by ACME Golf Inc? every locomotive made by ACME Rail Inc? every postage stamp (including all misprints) produced by the Austro-Hungarian empire? We have articles so swamped in pointless images that they have become essentially unusable to visitors on mobile. How does that make any sense? --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:34, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

I would definitely oppose including every work in an artist's oeuvre in an article on the artist, but I want to make sure we do not outlaw List of paintings by Edvard Munch, where the images are perfectly encyclopaedic and just as relevant for identification as the images in List of members of the 19th Bundestag. Tables in such long lists are often not great for small screens, but that is a separate issue from the number of images. Generally, lists are not the same as other articles in their use of images, so the rules should reflect that. —Kusma (talk) 12:25, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with that. Clearly the application of IMAGEREL should (and would) be different between a list article v a fairly broad concept article. To take your example, it would be entirely reasonable to include every image we have in the list article, provided that we use small thumbnails (upright=0.2); conversely (IMO) the bio article about Munch should be curated so that it has just one carefully chosen image to illustrate each phase of the development of his style , with maybe one or two especially notable examples that he did . Surely we don't want to replicate Commons? --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 18:23, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Please, let's not compromise the full extent of the encyclopedia by limiting what has always been one of its main features. Images and galleries define and describe just as much as text. That many choose to "read" Misplaced Pages on tinier gadgets should not dictate the coverage and image-styling of encyclopedic content articles. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:49, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

The problem we have at the moment with some articles is what David Eppstein describes above as "big indiscriminate galleries" and rote copying of everything in Commons for no evident informative purpose, a form of visual clutter. As IMAGEREL begins, "Images must be significant and relevant in the topic's context, not primarily decorative. They are often an important illustrative aid to understanding". Without curation, the information gets buried in the woodpile.

I am not proposing a principle that we must minimise the number of images, period. My proposal is that we provide a policy basis that editors can use to say "that point is already adequately illustrated, another image adds nothing new" or "this article had become so bogged down in images that it no longer navigable". I am talking about edge cases here, in most articles it is not an issue. But some have become swamped in an uncritical replica of Commons. This is not to enable wikilawyering, it just makes it easier to explain the rationale. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 18:23, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

As an example of the sort of burying articles in galleries that I would object to, see hexagonal prism, where (at least in its current version) four of its six sections are entirely image galleries (in some cases hidden in collapsed templates, with much of their content peripheral to the main article topic).

We do need wording that distinguishes this case from List of paintings by Edvard Munch, where the galleries are entirely appropriate, though. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:29, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

But as far as I can see, the List of paintings by Edvard Munch (and similar lists by artists) already complies with IMAGEREL, because the use of images in that article is proportionate and entirely relevant to that context. Conversely, to put all those paintings in the Munch bio article as a giant gallery would not be proportionate (IMO).

So to focus this discussion, can anyone suggest another sentence we can use to amplify the point made in the opening sentence of IMAGEREL? ("Images must be significant and relevant in the topic's context, not primarily decorative. They are often an important illustrative aid to understanding".) How about

Consequently, each image in an article should have a clear and unique illustrative purpose: for guidance, see less is more.

AFAICS, that responds to and respects both the Munch examples above. (FWIW, very few if any of the visual arts articles suffer from this swamping problem. The issue affects high profile articles like Swastika.) 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:29, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

It is entirely enough that we have the MOS:IMAGEREL shortcut. A proposal to retarget WP:NOTGALLERY to that would almost certainly fail, because it's part of a very long-standing set of policy (not guideline) WP:NOTFOO shortcuts to sections of WP:NOT, and such a change would both confuse editors today and render archived discussions of policy misleading. "Ain't broke; don't fix it."  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:10, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Audio video guidance

Hi there, I'm noting a lack of guidance for Audio video content, I've mentioned this at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Images. It seems people just edit MOS rather than run through large discussions, but I'm reluctant to start plunging in before getting some help. Here is what i think is needed:

• Something explaining that the guidance at Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/Images applies to Audio-video content in most cases, eg regarding relevance, image quality, textual information, offensive images, placement, size, location, availability. Nearly all of the page is relevant, in fact.
• The download advice might need to be different. Do videos or audio need a warning that they are large files? This is not assumed, it seems.

There is a case for some separate AV guidance, regarding:

• Length: should inline videos be shorter where possible? Does this apply to audio clips?
• Language: if audio or video is original language, should subtitled content be preferred rather than recording originals? Should songs be subtitled where possible? What are the requirements for validating translations (what are the relevant WP policies on translation of original source material that apply?)
• Rendition: historical accents and historical musical performances might be very rare. Should we say that modern standards are fine, in the absence of authentic reconstructions?
• Public domain renditions: if audio or video is a rendition of a public domain source, for example a work by Mozart, or a speech by Caesar, what are the requirements for source validation (these should reference WP's general guidelines, but these are mostly focused on secondary sources).

Jim Killock (talk) 20:25, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

• Elsewhere, someone asked whether an RfC would be needed to add guidance on this topic. I think not -- while discussion will be needed on details, I can't see anyone objecting to clarifying that multimedia beyond everyday images should follow similar guidelines to those for image. The question is where to say that. We don't want to duplicate guidance on contextual significance etc., because that creates two things that need to be kept in sync. Probably the best thing is to expand MOS/Images to explicitly cover other multimedia. See BTW Misplaced Pages:Manual_of_Style/Music_samples, which has a contextual significance section. EEng 20:39, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

  Thanks very much (and yes that was me!) I agree that MOS:Images would be best, especially to get this started.

  The contextual significance contains much about in-copyright works. That is in general very helpful. In-copyright video samples feels like something rather complex that might need an RFC, and might be best parked until there is a little more in place. Jim Killock (talk) 20:49, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

  @EEng Would it be helpful if I draft up something on Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Images and ask for feedback? Jim Killock (talk) 21:03, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

  I suggest you wait a while so that the experienced editors gathered here can lend their thoughts. After that, you might take the conversation back to Talk:MOS/Images, but since that page has 1/5 watchers of this one, and you've already put a pointer there to this thread here, it might be better to continue here as you begin to draft. There's no hurry to this, so the slower you take it, and the greater the extent to which others can get their thoughts in, the smoother it will go. (I'm afraid I'm really tied up IRL so the time I myslf can contribute is limited.) EEng 21:24, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

  Happy to wait. I made a stab at below, but I can wait for further thoughts / feedback here. What I've provided relates to historical source content, as most of the AV I've been dealing with falls into this category; I have guessed at some other considerations but it is currently narrower than it should be. Jim Killock (talk) 21:44, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Audiovisual content can also be used for illustrative purposes. Most of the guidance on images above applies to audio visual content. Additionally, consider:

• Length: inline videos or audio that is shorter will be easier for users to watch. Consider clipping long form content, and linking to the original on Commons, or elsewhere. Longer videos (eg, over 10 minutes) may be more suitable for links than inline video, unless they are highly relevant to the page's subject.
• Rendition: historical accents and historical musical performances of content may be very rare. Modern renditions are fine, where authentic reconstructions are not available, and may be preferred, where there is uncertainty about the original performances.
• Musical, poetic and literary content: aesthetic considerations are higher for these kinds of content. Where possible, the performances should be considered good by other editors. Where editors find performances are poor, content should generally not be included.
• Language: where audio or video is in the original language, subtitles should generally be preferred rather than translated versions, as this reflects the original more closely and text files are easier to correct than mistakes in audio-visual content. Where possible, songs should be subtitled. Original language versions should be made available where where possible for artistic content.
• Translations of subtitles should be verifiable, but as with other Misplaced Pages content, competent editors can create them. While academic translations are preferred, where subtitle translations are longer than 10-20 words, use of academic translations is likely to constitute copyright infringement. Here, a Wikipedian's translation should ideally be verifiable against an academic translation. (See Non-English sources for further guidance.)
• Public domain renditions: if audio or video is a rendition of a public domain source, for example a work by Mozart, or a speech by Caesar, the original sources must be valid. The performance should be comparable and follow the original. Where possible, include links on media file pages so that editors can make checks.
• Sourcing: as with images, sourcing of audio-visual content needs to be copyright compliant. Sources of CC video and audio can include Youtube, Flickr and CC search tools. Care should be taken to ensure the licensing claims appear to be valid.
• See also: Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/Music samples

Jim Killock (talk) 21:50, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

The "Language" point is a bit unclear to me. Is it asking for subtitles to be in English or the original language? If the phrase "rather than translated versions" is referring to the spoken or written material, that seems to contradict the phrase "where audio or video is in the original language". Which is also a weird way to say it because the "original language" could be English. Given that this is English Misplaced Pages, an English version should be provided whether or not there is a non-English version.

Subtitles should be provided for all videos with an audio track, to make them accessible for readers who cannot hear or find it difficult. There are additional guidelines at MOS:ANIMATION.

Not sure the "Sourcing" point needs to be made, as this is explained in detail for images generally.

The "Length" point should probably link to the Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/Music samples and point out the copyright issue when displaying here under fair use. It should say "video" not "videos" to be grammatical.

I would drop the "Translations of subtitles" point and just link to WP:NONENG for guidance on translations.

The "Public domain renditions" point does not make any sense to me, and I would just drop it.

I'm not sure whether the "Rendition" point needs to be made, but if it does, it's confusing. I think it's supposed to be recommending that historically accurate renditions of older works are preferred, if available. Maybe that's true, maybe it isn't, depending on what the purpose of inclusion in the article is. Might be better just to leave this point off; I don't see any similar guidance for audio samples of music. Page editors can decide which samples are best out of those available.

Another point probably worth making is that a video should be considered an optional part of an article. In other words, any content vital to reader understanding should be included in the text and not be omitted on the assumption that reader will watch the video. Many readers will not be able to view video due to technical limitations, such as using a web browser that is not configured with a video player, or reading an article in another medium such as an app, paper printout, or text-to-speech system (including those who cannot see or find it difficult to read text). There is more specific guidance against putting text in images at MOS:TEXTASIMAGES.

It's fine for a video to re-explain something that's already explained in the text if having a moving image clarifies substantially, but it seems wasteful for embedded videos to effectively repeat or rephrase the text.

-- Beland (talk) 22:49, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks very much!

• Regarding language, this was meant to be about non-English content, think Bach or Mozart in German or Latin; or Goethe's poetry.
• On Sourcing, the section on images does not include YT, which is significant for CC video.
• On translation, the situation for subtitles is a bit different, as usually you cannot use academic in-copyright translations, so this mention is retained.
• On public domain renditions, this was the subject of a long and unclear discussion recently. Does that help? Take a file such as File:Queen Elizabeth I's Reprimand of an Insolent Polish Ambassador..webm. There is some need for verification, even tho it is not being used as a citation? I've edited it for clarity.
• On style of renditions, this has come up a few times in discussion, including at the link above, where a user claimed only a Catholic priest could do a Latin audio recording; also at a parallel discussion on LA Misplaced Pages about accents and delivery, preferring a modern standard over historical guesses. I figured the same principle might apply to say reading Shakespeare, or using 16th century instruments; it simply shouldn't be a consideration, but sometimes editors think it should be.
• I've added the points on (1) text as images, (2) subtitles for EN content, (3) optionality of AV content

VERSION 0.2

Audiovisual content can also be used for illustrative purposes. Most of the guidance on images above applies to audio visual content. Importantly, audio-visual content should not be an essential part of a page, which is necessary to understand the whole. This is because not all readers will be able to download or access the content, for example because of technical limitations or relying on text to speech tools. With audio and video just as with any content, relevance is paramount; consult WP:DUE for further context. There must be a clear reason for including the content on the page.

Additionally, consider:

• Length: inline videos or audio that is shorter will be easier for users to watch. Consider clipping long form content, and linking to the original on Commons, or elsewhere. Longer videos (eg, over 10 minutes) may be more suitable for links than inline video, unless they are highly relevant to the page's subject.
• Rendition: historical accents and historical musical performances are not required. Modern renditions of audio are acceptable. For example, there is no need to read Shakespeare with an Elizabethan pronunciation.
• Musical, poetic and literary content: aesthetic considerations are higher for these kinds of content. Where possible, the performances should be considered good by other editors. Where editors find performances are poor, content should generally not be included.
• Subtitles for comprehension: In English language videos, an English language subtitle track should always be provided for accessibility. See MOS:ANIMATION for more details.
• Subtitles for translation: where audio or video is originally in a non-English language, for example a Goethe poem, subtitles should generally be preferred over than translated audio, as this reflects the original more closely and text files are easier to correct than mistakes in audio-visual content. Where possible, songs should be subtitled. Original language versions should be made available where where possible for artistic content.
• Translations of subtitles See Non-English sources for guidance. Note that longer subtitle sequences may need to be translated by Wikipedians rather than obtained from academic sources to avoid copyright infringement.
• Embedding text: As with images, rendered text should be avoided in video content. See MOS:TEXTASIMAGES for more information.
• Public domain renditions: if audio or video is a rendition of a public domain source, for example a work by Mozart, or a speech by Caesar, it must be possible to check the original scores or texts. An editor should be able to compare the performance with the original. Where possible, include links on media file pages so that editors can make checks.
• Sourcing: as with images, sourcing of audio-visual content needs to be copyright compliant. Sources of CC video and audio can include Youtube, Flickr and CC search tools. Care should be taken to ensure the licensing claims appear to be valid.
• See also: Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/Music samples

Jim Killock (talk) 23:32, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

This appears to be related to situations such as Talk:Niccolò_Machiavelli#RFC_on_video_inclusion, where a video consisting of a person reading a letter aloud was included in an article, one example of a series of such edits. It is not clear to me that we need a bunch of guidelines about the best form for this sort of application because it is not clear that it is desirable to include such videos in the first place - the cart is being put before the horse. MrOllie (talk) 23:54, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I certainly would like to clear up some of the misapprehensions that regretfully appeared in that discussion. It's a discussion I will deeply regret getting involved in for some time.

I'll be clear about the other discussions and examples of this content for context:

• List of poems by Catullus; Poetry of Catullus no debate and no questions occurred
• Neo-Latin; no questions raised (I am the main editor for this page but plenty of people make edits)
• Frederick the Great; video suggested and included as a link after discussion with editors
• Samuel Johnson; video suggested but not included after discussion with editors
• Latin; readings included; no discussion or objection
• Martin Luther; reading of his disputes with no objections raised
• Henry VIII; reading of his defence of Catholicism; posted and no objections raised
• Elizabeth I; video flagged as a possible addition as a link; no response yet
• Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel; early work added; an editor has asked me to check whether these are sufficiently relevant; I've agreed to do so and remove the videos if WP:DUE is not met.

@MrOllie I hope you can at least see that normally I try to be as collaborative as I can be. there's not much point going further into why that discussion became hard for me. However, policy is the place where we make guidelines to avoid disputes and lack of clarity.

What meets WP:DUE overrides any other consideration, to my mind so I have added that to the draft text. (With audio and video just as with any content, relevance is paramount; consult WP:DUE for further context. There must be a clear reason for including the content on the page.) Jim Killock (talk) 00:12, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

As regards the other articles where there was no discussion, just because there was no dissent at the moment doesn't mean there wont be in the future. What happened at the Machiavelli article could just as easily happen in the other ones

I am also asking you kindly to please stop making the issues with that RfC bigger than what they are. Plasticwonder (talk) 00:27, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

We can take this discussion in two ways:

• We can either construtively discuss the principles behind what video content should be allowable; or
• We can decide that emotions are too high for it and pause it

I do need this guidance, because there are divergences of opinion on some of the points, and it's important to me to be able to resolve them. But my guess is that if the three of us are just going to rehash the RFC discussion, then that would a terrible use of other people's time and energy. A break off would make sense, in my view. Jim Killock (talk) 00:41, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

No one's emotions are high but yours, judging by your rather relentless snipes against my character and the fact that you have so much as admitted it in the RfC. You have also stated that the RfC "needed to die" (quite strong words) when I gave you a chance to change your mind, and now you want to pause now that the discussion is nearing a close?

I do not get what you are trying to accomplish here, to be fair. Plasticwonder (talk) 00:47, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

It is not needed to rehash the RFC here, but I did feel that fresh eyes on this talk page should have enough context to understand what the proposal is about. MrOllie (talk) 00:48, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, I appreciate that as a valid concern. Does the change regarding WP:DUE help, or do you feel more is needed? For context, other points raised in the RFC such as regarding the need to be able to validate translation is also included. Jim Killock (talk) 00:54, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

I dropped the video from Henry VIII; it seemed like excessive detail. It's already on Defence of the Seven Sacraments where it's a bit more appropriate. But even there, it seems like it violates the video equivalent of MOS:TEXTASIMAGES. Same for Martin Luther and On the Bondage of the Will.

I also posted that the video for Elizabeth I should probably just be kept on Commons; there's already a general link to the topic there.

I agree it's not clear that videos of performances of works should generally be included, so I would also be hesitant about specifying anything in particular about those. Uploaded videos cover a broad variety of subjects, including scientific phenomena, buildings, and specific events. -- Beland (talk) 03:22, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

I would like to understand MOS:TEXTASIMAGES a bit more, especially regarding accessibility in particular, as this is certainly an overriding concern. What makes the text subtitle files inaccessible and not regarded as text? Jim Killock (talk) 09:09, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Subtitles are, of course, text. They are less accessible than the text in an article because some readers will have technical or logistical difficulty watching video and thus reading subtitles or listening to audio narration. For readers that do watch a video (which presumably has an animation or something which illustrates the subject of the article in a way a still image cannot), it increases accessibility by allowing people who cannot hear or find it difficult to know what is being said or what sounds are happening in the video. -- Beland (talk) 15:37, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Image use policy already says that for user-created diagrams, etc., a source for the underlying data must be included. To me, this applies straightforwardly to videos that are presenting public-domain content. A citation to the original work is kind of implied, but a reference to a specific version or even better an online copy, should suffice. YouTube videos that we're importing into Misplaced Pages as on-article videos are no different than diagrams or maps or explanatory videos uploaded by random Misplaced Pages or Commons users, assuming an appropriate copyright license. The reliability of YouTube is not really in question, any more than the reliability of any given Misplaced Pages editor is, when they are just repackaging information from a different underlying source in a more digestible way. That's different than citing a YouTube video as a reliable source for the information itself.

I'm not sure I have enough examples to make a guideline about video length. Ten minutes seems way too long for download on a mobile phone, and most videos I would expect to be under a minute. Perhaps there are exceptions, but I'd want to survey how videos are being used now. In the meantime, I would trim the 0.2 version down to reduce scope and reduce overlap with other pages and rephrase and retitle:

----

Video content (v. 0.3)

• The guidelines on this page also generally apply to videos.
• Many readers will not be able to play videos, because of technical limitations of their web browser, because they are seeing article content on a different web site or app, or because they are using a different medium, such as paper or text-to-speech system. Some readers cannot see or find it difficult. Videos should be used as a supplement to article material, to concisely illustrate the subject in a way that a still image or text cannot do. Videos should not replace article text, and articles should remain coherent and comprehensive when video playback is not available.
• Similar to MOS:TEXTASIMAGES, for accessibility and file size reasons:
  • Videos that simply show text should be replaced with text.
  • Videos that simply show a sequence of still pictures should be replaced with an image gallery.
  • Videos of text being read aloud should be replaced with text, or if the sound of words is being demonstrated, audio files (with the text being read in the file caption or in closed captioning).
  • Videos of text and narration with should be converted to article text.
• The copyright and other guidelines on Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/Music samples also apply to video samples.
• The policies on Misplaced Pages:Image use policy also generally apply to videos.
• Accessibility guidelines at MOS:ANIMATION apply.

----

-- Beland (talk) 03:56, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Videos has additional suggestions; not sure if it's appropriate to link there from here. -- Beland (talk) 03:57, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

With your commentary, this makes a lot of sense. I would point out that there was a lot of heat generated over YT reliability in the aforementioned RFC, so it would be good to point that it can be used. YT is not mentioned as a source for images in the images section above; an alternative would be to add it there in the list of common sources, but that also seems odd. I know one can point to the archive discussion, but that is not generally available knowledge for anyone looking at the guidance in future. Jim Killock (talk) 09:14, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

I added a clarifying note at Misplaced Pages:Reliable sources/Perennial sources for YouTube; hopefully this will not be controversial. -- Beland (talk) 02:44, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

Unfortunately that has been reverted as "unnecessary". It might make more sense here, because this is about video as illustration, and there is parallel advice for images above about CC content sources. Perhaps it should be parallel advice to this, eg mentioning that YT has a search facility for CC content (and there isn't anything else AFAIK). Jim Killock (talk) 09:10, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

I started a discussion at Misplaced Pages talk:Reliable sources/Perennial sources#Imported YouTube videos. -- Beland (talk) 20:21, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks - quick observation that we have lost that the guidance for illustrative audio content would also generally derive from the images guidance. The music samples page linked is wholly focused on samples from copyrighted material; there is a lot of PD / CC music material on WP, especially for classical music. Sometimes this could do with subtitling, etc, care in positioning, checks for relevance, etc. Jim Killock (talk) 09:36, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

OK, what are you suggesting? -- Beland (talk) 18:59, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

I think, where appropriate, add audio, eg "The guidelines on this page also generally apply to videos and audio files"; maybe "where appropriate, for instance non-English language audio files should include subtitles". I'm not sure there is much else. Jim Killock (talk) 22:56, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

And where would you find that addition to be appropriate? -- Beland (talk) 02:37, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

I would amend the title to "Video and Audio content"; I would amend bullet one to "The guidelines on this page also generally apply to videos and audio files". Under "Similar to MOS:TEXTASIMAGES, for accessibility and file size reasons:" I would add "where appropriate, for instance non-English language audio files should include subtitles". The accessibility guidelines could move to be bullet two, in order that audio and video advice is at the top. Jim Killock (talk) 08:02, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

It looks to me like hardly anything on Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/Images applies to audio files, and it seems like the wrong place to go looking for style advice about them. -- Beland (talk) 22:52, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

For example:

• pertinence
• quality
• text as sound?
• Location in article
• References from article text
• Placing files inline
• Making images available Uploading to commons, recording information about files, changes in editing and download size etc

These seem pretty substantially helpful guidance to me, and pretty similar level of relevance as to video files. Jim Killock (talk) 09:10, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, most of the material in those sections is not relevant to audio. I'd say if you feel strongly that guidance is needed for audio generally and not just music samples, we should create a new page. Editors shouldn't have to read through a whole page about images just to pick out the occasional tidbit on audio files, if they're only interested in the latter. -- Beland (talk) 20:32, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

I've posted the 0.3 draft for now, since that wouldn't be changed by adding an audio page somewhere else. -- Beland (talk) 20:46, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for posting the v 0.3. On audio, I would think about this from a few user perspectives:

• There is currently no MOS advice at all on audio files and approaching general layout, pertinence, etc. What would the user do? Currently, MOS offers them nothing, so they must either guess or work off examples on other pages.
• If a user asks for advice, where would they be pointed? (my guess: MOS:Images as closest match.

IMO, it would be better to offer them something, even apologetically ("There is currently no detailed advice on MOS regarding use of audio files, but the basic principles of WP:DUE and some considerations at MOS:Images may be helpful.") This could be placed at a page relevant to other audio usage files, for example. Jim Killock (talk) 10:02, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Feel free to propose a draft if you like. It's also possible no particular guidance is needed, if people are able to figure this stuff out using common sense and regular editorial judgement, and if disputes arise, turn to the various policy and guideline pages on topics like due weight. -- Beland (talk) 21:56, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Given the small amount of material to include about this, and the redundancy that would be required with MOS:IMAGES if "MOS:VIDEOS" were its own page, and given the short nature of the audio samples MoS page, I think the most sensible approach is to merge all of this into a WP:Manual_of_Style/Images_and_multimedia page with a top MOS:MEDIA shortcut (which I'm surprised doesn't already exist as an internal disambiguation page), then MOS:IMAGES, etc., going to sections. We have too many separate MoS pages as it is, and this is an ideal merge of two of them and a proposed third.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:07, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Sure, that's a reasonable alternate approach. I think it would work if we put the things that apply across all three at the top, and then make it clear with section headers which those interested in a specific media type should look at without having to read inapplicable guidelines. -- Beland (talk) 08:22, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

+1 to both of these observations. Jim Killock (talk) 09:04, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Yeps. If we hammer out a videos-related section, I'll be happy to do the work (most MoS merges and the like are done by me because I kind of have a database in my head of all the rules and how they interrelate, and 19 years of observing how misinterpretations, lawyering, and other problems can be avoided by careful wording.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:23, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

I think what we could agree on for videos has been added. -- Beland (talk) 00:27, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

misleading text in Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style#Dashes

The text on keyboard entry of dashes in Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style § Dashes is misleading. The text or on a Windows keyboard implies a technique specific to windows when in fact it is valid for any OS. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 15:20, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

True. What it should say: "on a Windows keyboard enter them manually as Alt+0 150 (on the numeric keypad) for en dash, and Alt+0 151 for em dash." -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 16:02, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

Wrong on two counts:

1. No. It should not say anything at all, per WP:NOTHOWTO.
2. And even if it does, those alt codes are only valid for code page 1252 and related. They don't work if the user has a different default code page installed.

Delete it completely. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 17:23, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

I doubt that NOTHOWTO is meant to apply to the MOS. It's surely helpful for editors and hence should stay, reworded if needed. Gawaon (talk) 08:26, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Gaewon is correct: NOTHOWTO applies to articles only. MOS is littered with how-to stuff, as is should where the ratio (editor confusion and time saved)/(WP:MOSBLOAT) seems sufficiently high. However, if this starts getting into weeds of code pages and such, it may be best to relegate the whole thing to WP:How to make dashes, with a pointer to that from MOS. EEng 20:28, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

So why not simply recommend {{mdash}}, {{ndash}} and {{snd}} rather than advise keyboard callisthenics? --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 20:36, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I have always advocated symbolic representations (templates such as you list, or html escapes such as —) of the various dashes (and in some cases, even hyphens), rather than having them appear literally in the wikisource, so that editors can see at a glance that the right character is present. But even though EEng is pretty much always right, I can't seem to get people on board with this. EEng 20:49, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

I am happy typing the dashes on my Apple keyboards but also happy with recommending the templates rather than giving keyboard-specific advice. What I would like to avoid is warring bands of gnomes going around changing unicode dashes to templated dashes and vice versa. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:31, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Edit conflict: yes, different route to the same answer. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 20:38, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

JMF's policy understanding is mistaken above. WP:NOTHOWTO only applies to article content (and other reader-facing content, like portals and the front page features). If it applied to internal documentation, then we would have to delete the entire "Help:" namespace and about 95% what is in "Misplaced Pages:" namespace. However, the technical point JMF raised is entirely correct, and we should not be telling editors to use keyboard codes that will do the wrong thing (or nothing) if they don't happen to be using the "right" code page. To simply recommend {{mdash}}, {{ndash}} and {{snd}} is the sensible approach.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:02, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Let's just direct people to Misplaced Pages:How to make dashes. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:00, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Is there a MOS guidance that applies to changing between common terms based on the name of the Wiki article?

Do we have a guideline for dealing with different name, common names for the same thing (Inline-four engine vs Straight-four engine)? The target article, Straight-four engine, has used both names (changed in 2009 and 2022). Sources use both terms but I think the shorted "I4" is used more often in sources. I presume we would follow something like the MOS:ENGVAR where if there is no source preference we go with what the editors used first. Recently an editor, Kumboloi, made a number of good faith changes in linking articles from "inline-four" to "straight-four" to align external article text with the target article name. Is there a guide on this? How should this be handled? Springee (talk) 14:55, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

It's a policy, our naming conventions policy, which largely doubles as our policy on article titles. Generally, for a given thing there's no reason to use a different name in the prose of any other article than one would use in the article about the thing itself, if that makes sense.Remsense ‥ 论 14:57, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure where the naming convention says we should change article text in a case like this. The article in question indicates both names are common (A straight-four engine (also referred to as an inline-four engine)). This is also reflected in the two name changes over the years. I don't see where the naming convention says we should favor the target article name vs what the individual article sources are using. Consider a hypothetical, I'm created a Wiki article about the new "CarX". My RS source that says, "CarX uses an inline four engine". Why would I not follow the source vs use the title of our straight four article? This is especially true if if the hyperlink is added later by a different editor. Also, until 2022 the title of the article was "inline". A consensus of 3 editors changed the article name. That's fine but the result is many changes to other articles. If a new consensus of 5 editors reverses the change do we flop back? I think it's less disruptive (makes articles more stable) if we avoid article text changes in cases like this. However, I am interested in knowing what guidance might apply here. Springee (talk) 15:52, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm interested in understanding this. My motivation in making the edits came down to a suspicion that there was some type of penalty incurred by linking through a redirect page, or that the redirects imposed a maintenance overhead. I hadn't read the naming convention, but if there's no real reason to reduce the number of redirected links, and recognizing that the target page could just as easily be renamed again in the future, I'll stop doing these edits. (Personally, I prefer "inline" to "straight", but I can see how the renaming would help organize the associated pages.) Thanks. Kumboloi (talk) 15:56, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

My reasoning is WP:NC stresses how we are required to name things, as we are un all editorial decisions, based on WP:V and WP:NPOV (in many cases this boils down to the result of WP:COMMONNAME). It has provisions specific to the article title and not the body, but much of it is expressing how to apply V and NPOV in deciding what to call things.

If we take alternative names as such—e.g. that, all else being equal, we do take inline four and straight four to be synonyms, truly referring to the same thing for our purposes—it makes very little sense to "wall off" which names are used in a particular article, as there are no clear limits on how strictly this would have to be observed. Am I allowed to use any synonymous nouns, verbs, or adjectives in my synthesis that don't happen to appear in my three best sources? On the other hand, naming according to a generalized scope is surely more coherent for a hyperlinked encyclopedia providing tertiary analysis instead of merely refactoring and reshuffling the specific language of our secondary sources.

Of course exceptions abound, much of the time alternative names and redirects should be freely used according to syntactical and contextual concerns—but I believe this to be correct mindset to assume by default. I don't think any given article that uses First World War needs to be changed. However, in cases like these, I feel it pays dividends to use terminology consistently between pages. If readers are encountering technical or domain specific language for the first time, we create the most helpful and coherent tertiary analysis for them if we zoom out a bit. It makes no sense to prefer Sassanid to Sasanian just because the book we're citing prefers the former—e.g., in an article about a specific battle, or a broad conceptual article not specific to the Sasanians—our deliberately preferring Sassanid simply does not aid the reader in becoming familiar with whatever additional context they're going to go to Sasanian Empire for in order to better understand our other article.

If I wake up and find this totally incoherent, I apologize. It's hard to speak clearly about naming and reference, though it's one of my favorite things to think about. Remsense ‥ 论 16:49, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

WP:NOTBROKEN clearly says: "Piping links solely to avoid redirects is generally a time-wasting exercise that can actually be detrimental. It is almost never helpful to replace ] with ]." So if a link already leads to the correct article, but using an alternative name that redirects, that's absolutely fine and nothing more needs to be done. I realize that you're probably not talking about piping, but about changing the link text and link target together – but that too is unnecessary if the existing link target works fine (by redirecting). Gawaon (talk) 17:12, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Kumboloi, thanks for that explanation. It reaffirms my believe that you were acting in good faith (I hope you took my revert that way as well). Springee (talk) 19:11, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

I think there needs to be a good reason to not use the article title in text (and they do exist), and that can be discussed on a per-case basis at the relevant article (or other) talk page.—Bagumba (talk) 17:19, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. Remsense ‥ 论 17:21, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Just so long as it is realized that THERE RATHER OFTEN IS A GOOD REASON! National language preferences for one thing. Busywork drive-by changes should be strongly discouraged. Johnbod (talk) 18:48, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Goes without saying! Remsense ‥ 论 19:04, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

I just thought I'd drive by and agree with that. EEng 22:10, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

The answer the the OP's question is "More or less yes", in the form of MOS:STYLEVAR. Remesense's idea above that article titles policy and its dependent naming-conventions guidelines and essays (which actually defer to MoS on style questions) somehow dictate in-article content. They absolutely do not, or we would simply merge them. However, agreement with the page title can actually qualify as a good reason for a text change under STYLEVAR a lot of time, such as when a old page title (and our mirroring of it in the text) was a misnomer, unhelpfully ambiguous, obsolete, or obscurantist. When such problems don't apply, then having more than one way to refer to the subject is a boon to editors and readers, since it allows us to write less repetitively. But the lead should almost always agree with the title, and start with the term/name in the title and secondarily provide any noteworthy alternative(s). Some exceptions of course apply, such as when a term/name in the title is a colloquialism and used for WP:COMMONNAME purposes in the title but is not the best way to introduce the first sentence (this is especially common at biographical articles, in which we often give the full "Elizabeth" or "Robert" name of someone more commonly called "Liz" or "Bobby" and given that way in the page title).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:28, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

I think they must dictate in-article content to a degree at least—it would make no sense to use a particular name in the title and initial definition (I've been assuming congruence throughout, e.g. no disambiguators considered) and then never again. Remsense ‥ 论 03:36, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

That's a correlation/causation mix-up. What you're talking about is just WP:Common sense (to the point of "Don't be intentionally perverse as if with a goal of confusing readers as much as possible") and a matter of MOS:BETTER. It's not an element of title policy or of naming conventions, which do not address article content (except a few of the worst-written NC pages have a statement or two in them about body content that needs to move out of those pages; I've been cleaning those up as I run across them).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:18, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

I've been racking my brain trying to articulate exactly what I mean here, but I do not think it is merely correlative. Hopefully that is a useful thought inasmuch beyond just the trivial truth that the language one is exposed to affects the language they go on to use and think in terms of. Remsense ‥ 论 19:32, 25 December 2024 (UTC)